From 1964 until 2011, the State of Emergency Law in Syria allowed government forces to arbitrarily detain political suspects at will for unlimited duration of time. During this time, tens of thousands have reportedly been arrested, tortured, and held in isolation for months to years without charge or trial. [1] Although the state of emergency was lifted in 2011 at the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, arrests continue. Civil society activists, media workers (including citizen journalists), and medical and humanitarian workers have reportedly been targeted by government forces, pro-government militias, and increasingly by non-state armed groups. [2]
In May 2011, President Bashar al-Assad issued amnesty to all political prisoners and on June 21, 2012 declared amnesty for all crimes committed before June 20, according to Syrian State Television. [3] However, in January 2014, an extensive report was released containing evidence smuggled out of the country showing the systematic killing and torture of about 11,000 detainees. [4]
According to the Center for Documentation of Violations in Syria, a monitoring group composed of a network of Syrian opposition activists that documents human rights violations committed through the course of the Syrian uprising, there were 37,245 prisoners in Syria as of March 2014. [5]
In March 2011, several hundred protests gathered at the Ministry of the Interior in Damascus. Security forces arrested more than 38 people at the protest including Syrian author Tayeb Tizini, human rights activist Soheir Atasi, and seven relatives of opposition figure Kamal Labwani. [6]
In 2014, an anonymous defector from the Syrian military police claims to have smuggled 55,000 digital photographs of 11,000 dead detainees in Syrian prisons. These photographs, alongside testament to their authenticity, were released in a report authored by British lawyers and commissioned by the government of Qatar, which was shown to the United Nations Security Council in April 2014 in efforts by French delegates to have the International Criminal Court investigate the case as crimes against humanity. According to Samantha Power, United States ambassador to the UN, "the gruesome images of corpses bearing marks of starvation, strangulation and beatings... indicate that the Assad regime has carried out systematic, widespread and industrial killing." [7] [8] President Assad argues that these claims are allegations without evidence, saying: "It’s funded by Qatar, and they say it’s an anonymous source. So nothing is clear or proven. The pictures are not clear which person they show. They’re just pictures of a head, for example, with some skulls. Who said this is done by the government, not by the rebels? Who said this is a Syrian victim, not someone else?" [9] Syria is not a member of the International Criminal Court and therefore could only be prosecuted in it through a referral by the UN Security Council. However, such a referral is considered unlikely given the veto power of Russia, a strong ally of the Assad government, in the Security Council. [7]
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported in 2015 that an estimated 200,000 Syrians have been arrested by government forces since the uprising began in 2011, and that nearly 13,000 Syrians, including 108 children, had been tortured to death in the prisons. Rami Abdel-Rahman, head of the Observatory, states that security officials are known to starve detainees to death, deny medicine to those who are ill, and subject them to psychological torture. According to Abdel-Rahman, some of the families of those who were killed under torture have been forced to sign statements that their loved ones were killed by rebel groups. [10]
It is alleged that groups in opposition to the government in the Syrian Civil War abducted and detained individuals arbitrarily. According to a brief released by Amnesty International in December 2013, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), an opposition group that controlled significant territory in northern Syria at the time, was responsible for abductions and arbitrary detentions of citizens. AI states that those targeted by ISIS for abduction have included a "wide range of individuals, including people suspected of committing ordinary crimes, such as theft or murder, and others accused of committing religiously prohibited acts, such as zina (sex out of wedlock) and alcohol consumption. As well, ISIS forces have targeted local people suspected of organizing protests and opposition to their rule, including community activists and members of local councils set up to provide services to residents following the withdrawal of Syrian government forces, other civil society and media activists, and commanders and members of rival armed groups, including those operating as part of the Free Syrian Army. ISIS was also alleged to have abducted foreign nationals, including journalists, staff of international organizations and religious figures." [11]
In December 2013, prominent human rights defender Razan Zeitouneh and three of her colleagues Wael Hamada, Samira Khalil, and Nazem Hammadi were abducted by an unknown armed group, believed to be associated with the Army of Islam, from their office at the Center for Documentation of Violations in Syria in Douma, a city outside of Damascus under the control of a number of armed groups. [12]
According to eyewitnesses, in December 2014 in the town of Al Bab near the Turkish border, 50 Syrian civilians who were being held in a makeshift prison by ISIS forces for violation of Sharia law, were killed by airstrikes by United States forces who were targeting ISIS headquarters. Although the United States Central Command confirmed the airstrike, they claim that a review has shown no evidence of civilian casualties. However, civil defense volunteers claim to have removed 50 civilians bodies from the rubble of the building, as well as the bodies of 13 ISIS guards. [13]
In June 2014, 320 prisoners were released from Aleppo Central Prison, according to Syrian state news and confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Activists state that most of the prisoners released from Aleppo prison had tuberculosis. The release is claimed to come as part of an amnesty granted by President Bashar al-Assad as a celebratory gesture following his re-election on 3 June 2014. [14]
Bashar Hafez al-Assad is a Syrian politician who is the 19th president of Syria, since 17 July 2000. In addition, he is the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and the Secretary-General of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party.
Torture, the infliction of severe physical or psychological pain upon an individual to extract information or a confession, or as an illicit extrajudicial punishment, is prohibited by international law and is illegal in most countries. However, it is still used by many governments. The subject of this article is the use of torture since the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which prohibited it.
The situation for human rights in Syria is considered poor by international observers. A state of emergency was in effect from 1963 until April 2011, giving security forces sweeping powers of arrest and detention.
Kamal al-Labwani is a Syrian doctor and artist, He was released from Adra Prison, near Damascus on November 15, 2011, according to state media. Before his release, Amnesty International called him a prisoner of conscience.
Tal Dosr al-Mallohi born January 4, 1991 is a Syrian blogger from Homs. In December 2009, Tal was taken from her home by Syrian forces, which took issue with the contents of her blog.
The Syrian civil war is an ongoing multi-sided civil war in Syria fought between the Syrian Arab Republic led by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and various domestic and foreign forces that oppose both the Syrian government and each other, in varying combinations.
Haitham al-Maleh is a Syrian human rights activist and former judge. He is a critic of the current Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad and has been imprisoned by the Syrian government because he was calling for constitutional reforms. Maleh became an important opposition figure in the Syrian Civil War.
Protests began in Syria as early as 26 January 2011, and erupted on 15 March 2011 with a "Day of Rage" protest generally considered to mark the start of a nationwide uprising. The Syrian government's reaction to the protests became violent on 16 March, and deadly on 18 March, when four unarmed protesters and seven police were killed in Daraa.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian uprising from September to December 2011. This period saw the uprising take on many of the characteristics of a civil war, according to several outside observers, including the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as armed elements became better organized and began carrying out successful attacks in retaliation for the ongoing crackdown by the Syrian government on demonstrators and defectors.
This article details responses from Syrian government officials to widespread civil unrest which began in early 2011 and eventually unraveled into nationwide civil war.
Human rights violations during the Syrian civil war have been numerous and serious, with United Nations reports stating that the war has been "characterized by a complete lack of adherence to the norms of international law" by the warring parties who have "caused civilians immeasurable suffering". For a relatively small number of these war crimes, prosecution of Syrian civil war criminals has resulted.
The Battle of Aleppo was a major military confrontation in Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, between the Syrian opposition against the Syrian government, supported by Hezbollah, Shia militias and Russia, and against the Kurdish-majority People's Protection Units (YPG). The battle began on 19 July 2012 and was part of the ongoing Syrian Civil War. A stalemate that had been in place for four years finally ended in July 2016, when Syrian government troops closed the rebels' last supply line into Aleppo with the support of Russian airstrikes. In response, rebel forces launched unsuccessful counteroffensives in September and October that failed to break the siege; in November, government forces embarked on a decisive campaign that resulted in the recapture of all of Aleppo by December 2016. The Syrian government victory was widely seen as a turning point in Syria's civil war.
Sednaya Prison is a military prison near Damascus in Syria operated by the Syrian government. The prison has been used to hold thousands of prisoners, both civilian detainees and anti-government rebels. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimates that 30,000 detainees have perished in Sednaya from torture, ill-treatment and mass executions since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, while Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 "that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015."
The civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War, or as it was sometimes called by the media, the Syrian Revolution, was an early stage of protests – with subsequent violent reaction by the Syrian Arab Republic – lasting from March to 28 July 2011, as part of the wider spread Arab Spring in the Arab world. The uprising, initially demanding democratic reforms, evolved from initially minor protests, beginning as early as January 2011 and transformed into massive protests in March.
The 2014 Syrian detainee report, also known as the Caesar Report, formally titled A Report into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime, is a report that claims to detail "the systematic killing of more than 11,000 detainees by the Syrian government in one region during the Syrian Civil War over a two and half year period from March 2011 to August 2013". It was released on 21 January 2014, a day before talks were due to begin at the Geneva II Conference on Syria, and was commissioned by the government of Qatar. Qatar has been a key funder of the rebels in Syria. The Syrian government questioned the report due to its ties to hostile sides against the Syrian government and pointed to how many of the photos were identified as casualties among international terrorists fighting the Syrian government or Syrian army troops or civilians massacred by them due to supporting the Syrian government.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from January to July 2014. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian Civil War.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights is a UK-based independent monitoring group, which monitors casualties and briefs various United Nations agencies. It monitors Syrian casualties of all the parties in the Syrian civil war. The SNHR was founded in June 2011 by Fadel Abdul Ghany, who is the chairman of the board of directors. Members have been detained, and many now live outside Syria.
International and national courts outside Syria have begun the prosecution of Syrian civil war criminals. War crimes perpetrated by the Syrian government or rebel groups include extermination, murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture and imprisonment. "[A]ccountability for serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights is central to achieving and maintaining durable peace in Syria", stated UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo.
Omar Alshogre is a Syrian refugee, a public speaker and human rights activist who is currently the Director for Detainee Affairs at the Syrian Emergency Task Force. He is known for his efforts to raise awareness of human rights abuses in Syria and his personal experience of torture and starvation by the Syrian government during his three years of detention.
Al-Khatib prison is a detention and torture center in the Muhajreen neighborhood of central Damascus, Syria. It is operated by Branch 251 of the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate.